Chapter 347: Key man (2)  

<Underground Level 11, 'River of Flow'>

Countless corpses of demonic beasts are floating on the boiling river water.

geuleuleuleug...

Daylily of the Blood Tree. Among them, the largest one raised its huge head and revealed its teeth.

However.

peo-peong! ujijijijig!

Eight giant thunderbolts struck down, tearing the daylily's head off.

hududug- hududug- hududug- pungdeong! pungdeong! pungdeong!

Fluid and flesh fell like rain, pounding on the surface of the water.

Seven large teeth and an eighth that was small in comparison.

A massive aura rises around it, like the body of a hound.

Tsutsutsutsutsutsutsuts...

A concentration of aura that boils and evaporates the surrounding river water just by existing.

There was an existence that emitted a huge aura in the shape of a hound.

An old man sat with his eyes closed on a pile of daylily corpses.

Despite the wrinkles and age spots, his straight waist was like a well-forged long sword.

Vikir.

He opened his eyes, stroking his graying hair and long beard.

"...It is time to go."

The years passed like water.

After what seemed like an eternity, Vikir looked at his stats and saw that they were all at 798.

...Pow!

The scale of forced equality has done its job and shattered.

"That's enough."

Vikir stepped down onto the corpse of the last daylily he had just killed.

The reward for killing all of the daylilies that had formed a colony on the river was piled high in Vikir's hand.

Golden candies. A huge number of candies in Vikir's hands.

Vikir had converted the rewards into level candies.

[hack-hack-]

Vikir turned his head at the sound of breathing behind him.

There was a baby madam, or rather a girl madam, who had grown so big that she had to raise her head to look up.

[...Has time already gone this far? Time flies so fast].

Decarabia squinted through Vikir's white beard.

Vikir had killed Tudor, Sancho, Piggy, Bianca, and all of Balak's warriors, and yet he had remained here, in this flowing river.

Then.

[ Are you still out there? ]

A voice came from the air.

Vikir turned to see a familiar figure hovering in the air.

It was a fairy.

[ Is there really no such thing as a progression?]

The fairy grumbled, as if tired of seeing Vikir.

After all, as a store owner, how can you look kindly at a customer who is proudly refusing to leave the floor while continuing to hunt the daylilies that have been made so that they cannot be caught?

The fairy said, as if dying of headache.

[ Could you please leave now ? You ate enough to pluck, right? ]

It was crying like a baby.

Then.

Vikir opened his mouth.

"Okay. It's time to get out."

[ ! ] For a moment, the fairy's eyes flashed open.

Vikir, who had always kept his eyes closed and remained silent when asked to leave the floor, had somehow responded to the conversation today.

[ Were you thinking well, when are you going to leave ? ]

Vikir waved a hand in the air at the fairy.

"When I leave depends on your attitude. Come closer. Let's talk."

[ What ? What do you want to talk about ? ]

The fairy looked frightened for a moment at being asked to come closer.

However, as if it wanted Vikir to get out of this floor quickly, the creature was hesitantly approaching.

Keeping its distance as far as it could.

But.

What the fairy considered a safe distance was meaningless to Vikir.

...hwaag!

Reaching out in an instant, Vikir grabbed the fairy by the nape of the neck before it had time to react.

"What are you so wary of, just because I want to talk to you?"

[ What what what are you doing ? ]

But the fairy didn't finish the sentence.

Vikir pressed down on both of its cheeks, forcing it to open its mouth, and shoved something into it.

It was a black liquid in a leather sack.

Gulp- Gulp- Gulp- Gulp-

The fairy had to drink the liquid that Vikir poured into its mouth without knowing why.

And soon enough, the response came.

[ K h u a a a a a a a g h ? ]

Along with a terrible scream, black smoke began to billow from the fairy's mouth.

The sensation as if the five internal organs were melting was tormenting the fairy.

"...hmm."

Vikir stomped on the struggling creature and looked down at it.

Fairies were essentially indestructible, the product of magic engineering created from the essence of the Hell Tree, and therefore indestructible except by their creator, the Demon.

But the fairy in front of him now was dying, slowly but surely.

It was slowly dying in terrible pain.

[ Uh huh huh why? ]

The fairy itself doesn't seem to know what has caused it to suffer.

"Well. Maybe it's revenge for all the humans who have suffered in this tower."

Vikir replied in a dry voice, but the fairy didn't seem to hear him.

puswiiiiiig-

In the end, the fairy burned with a terrifying momentum, and then vanished.

"...Well, that worked."

Vikir flicked the black liquid in the leather hilt in his hand.

It was Piggy's blood.

Blood that had been there for a very long time, unevaporated and unrotten, still pooling in the sack.

It was certainly no ordinary human blood.

Vikir had collected it after killing Piggy and stored it in a leather sack.

'There is definitely a strange blood in Piggy's body. It's deadly to demons.

When Vikir first noticed the small wound on Piggy's forearm, he felt a sense of strangeness that only a seasoned demon hunter could.

'Piggy. Is your blood naturally black?'

'Huh? Aaah, it's always been this way, huh? I'm not demonized or anything, I've been like this since I was a kid! The doctors said it's because I have a lot of iron in my blood... but it seems like it's gotten a little darker since I've been in the Hell Tree?'

Vikir nodded, looking at the fairy that had turned into a handful of blood and spread before his eyes.

"If my judgment is correct...."

* * *

"...You may be the key to bringing down Amdusias's Abyss.."

Vikir spoke up.

Now that they had cleared the 11th level of the Flowing River, the younger Vikir stood before Tudor, Sancho, Piggy, Bianca, Ahul, and the rest of Balak's warriors, all of whom looked nervous.

"Huh? Me?"

Piggy looked surprised, as if he felt overwhelmed by all the attention on him.

But Vikir was serious.

"I've been studying you for a while now, during my years in the Flowing River. It seems that your blood has strange properties." Piggy's blood reacted not only to demons, but also to fairies, monsters, and others.

Although it didn't cause a violent reaction by itself, it could be used to great effect when applied to a sword or mixed into an aura and wielded.

"I'm going to use this to clear the tower once and for all."

It was a question that Vikir had pondered over and over again during the decades he'd lived on the river.

In the timeline he lived in before his regression, the tower would be captured a little later.

But even then, most of the heroes had fallen by now, and only one had cleared the tower.

Morg Camus, a genius among geniuses.

'At that time, I didn't even know that the appearance of this tower was the work of the demon.'

This is a glimpse into the genius of Camus, who cleared the tower despite the uncertainty of the situation.

But now, Camus is not in the tower.

Someone else has to clear the tower.

'... Plus, Piggy wasn't at the Academy at that time.'

Maybe it wasn't just bullying that caused Piggy to drop out of school before the regression.

Maybe his blood was telling him something was wrong and he was scared that he wasn't like everyone else.

Vikir stared at Piggy once more.

"...."

"...?"

A being that bends the laws of causality within the tower. Perhaps the greatest variable in the future.

Vikir put a hand on Piggy's shoulder.

"The reason you woke up first is because there was something you had to do first."

"...what I had to do."

Piggy dropped his gaze and looked at his hands.

Then.

"Vikir."

Tudor called to Vikir.

Vikir turned his head, and Tudor thrust a tightly curled fist in front of him.

"Take this."

The thing in Tudor's palm opened wide.

It was a candy, sprinkled with glittering gold.

"Why are you giving me this?"

"I don't know why."

It was not Tudor who answered Vikir's question, but Bianca, who stood beside him.

Sancho, Piggy, Ahul, and the rest of the Balak warriors also handed Vikir golden candies.

"This is the reward for completing the mission. But I think it would be better for you to eat it than for me to eat it."

"Please, please, Vikir, I can do nothing but share my blood!"

"Hunting ground. please...."

Everyone stares at him.

Vikir is silent for a moment, then nods.

"I will not waste them."

The golden candies fell into Vikir's hands.

jjalgeulag-

Combined with the rewards for completing the mission and all the candies they had collected while killing demons, there were quite a few.

Tudor's eyes widened in anticipation.

"So, are you going to eat them all in one sitting and then go meet the core of the tower?"

"No. There's something I need to do first."

Vikir shook his head once, then pulled an item from his pocket.

"...!"

The one that made everyone's eyes widen.

-<Return Scroll> / Scrolls / Rank: ?

A scroll that allows you to return to the Tutorial Zone for one time only.

The answer to the question 'Lord, where are you going?' is written.

※Level will be reset when used

It was a return scroll that sent you back to the very beginning of the stage.